Startup Life: Surviving and Thriving in a Relationship with an Entrepreneur

CHAPTER THREE

COMMUNICATION

Learning how to communicate effectively is essential for any successful relationship, but it’s especially important in the context of an entrepreneurial couple. For the entrepreneur to be successful at work, she must be excellent at communicating. She must also be excellent at communicating if she wants to be successful at home. The communication style, the requirements, and the pressures surrounding it are often very different but equally important.

Tactics as well as broader philosophical approaches can address these differences. The tactics can cover positive situations and negative situations, your daily routine as well as long arc discussions. Learning how to communicate effectively when you are fighting or melting down is just as critical as learning how to communicate when everything is going fine but you are both running at full speed in different cities.

While the ideas in this chapter apply to any couple and may cause you to feel that you’ve entered into reading yet another relationship book, we’ve tried to focus and explain aspects of communication that we think apply and take into consideration the unique characteristics of the life of an entrepreneurial couple.

APPOINTMENTS

We are huge believers in making appointments with each other. Our lives are incredibly busy and full. We have time for a myriad of appointments, especially in the work context, but we used to find that we never had time for each other. This is common in an entrepreneurial ...